Prince: Taking it easy...

August 18 2010

After I played with Ruffian was sore in a couple places (back, right arm and knee) so I decided that I would just take it easy with Prince. I didn't want to miss a session with him because the weather was so nice and I only have four days a week that I can ride (those are the days when my mom is out playing with Knightly). So I didn't saddle Prince but we just rode bareback. 

We started out Online [of course ;)], and did some sideways, jumping a single barrel, falling Leaf, circles and Figure eights. Figure eights were interesting. Prince decided to make up a new figure eight, which didn't include the barrels ;) So we slowed it right down and went at the walk so that I could fix the problem. Prince was basically making assumptions and wasn't listening to me at all, he was just running around and turning when he got to each barrel... I am not exactly sure why yet but I have some ideas to what might have caused him to learn that.  After we slowed it down things went better and we ended when things were much better. 

Then we did circles! But this time I changed it up quite a bit. There was a barrel about 3ft from the fence and I asked Prince to canter around in a circle and then stop between the barrel and the fence. He caught on really quickly so after doing that a couple times I would ask him to canter through and not stop. 

Once that was going really well we did traveling circles over to the pedestal area and I asked Prince to trot around in a circle and then stop on the pedestal. At first it was just the front feet and then once he understood that I asked for all four feet (that tested my timing!!) and then the back feet. The back feet were a little harder but we took our time and slowly I could see it was starting to happen. At first Prince would stop on the other side of the pedestal but pretty soon he would stop closer and closer until one time he kept one hind foot on and then the next time around he stopped perfectly! It was fun and it really helped out connection.

Even though Prince was kind of sweaty I still got on and rode... it wasn't the nicest feeling riding a wet horse but we still had fun. We played with Sideways and pushing the ball mainly. Mom and I played a little game where we had to get the horses to push the ball to each other. It was really fun even with the added challenge of the hill in the riding ring sometimes sending the ball in totally the wrong direction ;) It was really neat to test our skills, especially because at times if you weren't in the right place at the right time you would loose the ball. So it really tested our communication and how quickly the horses responded to us when we asked.

I had to trim Knightly this morning so I didn't ride long. But it was nice for Prince and I to have shorter ride and not really focus on anything of the things we have been playing with lately :)

Naturally,
~Keri